Destroying Angel (16 page)

Helping in the kitchen, peeling vegetables, preparing meals, setting tables, rushing upstairs with trays and to attend to Kate’s toilette was bad enough, but washing, ironing and sewing buttons on shirts for Hubert set my teeth on edge.

He insisted on a clean shirt and linen each day, and then there was the washing for the whole house, with the exception of Mr Sandeman, who had apparently been sewn into his clothes some time ago and was reluctant to be parted from them.

I soon discovered that, unless Kate was a very good young actress, she truly was a frail creature, but I felt it was perhaps by habit, since everyone had insisted that she was so from her earliest days. Her eyesight was poor, and she soon complained that her eyes were too tired to read or sew. Mrs Robson informed me that she refused to wear the spectacles Hubert had thought suitable, which meant that she had to have someone to read to her. 

It was clear that Kate had no desire to have Thane with her all day, and as my time was so fully occupied I suggested he should remain with Wolf, which no doubt pleased them both.

Kate now called him Thane. She told me that although Hubert had no suspicions of this, she had known from almost their very first meeting that he was not her Roswal.

‘He was just – different. Animals are like that. They can look the same, but they are all individuals. And Thane has quite a different personality. I didn’t want to upset Hubert. He was so desperately keen that this was Roswal returned to me. Felt I would be so heartbroken if I knew the truth.’

She shrugged and said sadly, ‘I guessed that Roswal had probably died, and that he couldn’t bear to tell me.’

I looked at her, but said nothing. She obviously did not know that Hubert had shot her beloved pet. It was certainly not my place to tell her. I hoped she would never find out the truth, and this was the closest we ever came to having a real conversation.

Every hour through the next few days, we waited for Collins to reappear. Kate was so sure that she would walk in and Mrs Robson, also certain, was full of reassurances.

‘Something upset her, that’s what.’

I knew perfectly well what had upset her, but I felt there was something more than simply being upset involved, and each time I escaped for an hour, while I walked for some fresh air in the grounds, I knew I was also searching for her.

I looked at the pond every day, wondering if she had, like Kate’s sister Amy, taken her life because of an unhappy love affair.

Yet what I had seen, heard and knew of her didn’t quite fit 
that pattern. I felt Collins would have been more likely to have got rid of her faithless lover, or the woman who had taken her place in his affections. As she had tried, unsuccessfully, with me.

Walks with Thane inevitably led towards Wolf Rider, who listened patiently to my trials and tribulations. Then, to my surprise, it was my turn to be the listener.

‘So you will be leaving very soon, Rose, and this is also the end of my time here. I have known for some while now that it was drawing to a close.’

‘I thought you were going to Chillingham for a bull calf for Hubert.’

He shook his head. ‘He will doubtless find someone else to do that for him. I have had enough of Staines.’ He sighed and looked towards the west. ‘I need to be free again. To be back with my own people.’

‘You really want to go back?’

Again that shrug. ‘I have completed the tasks that have kept me here, and discovering my grandmother’s identity led me to Staines.’ He paused, smiled. ‘And to meeting with you again.’

‘I have heard that you have a right to remain at Staines – an even greater right by inheritance than Hubert himself.’

He grinned at that. ‘You must have been talking to our amateur genealogist in the library. Am I right?’

I laughed and he went on. ‘He has prepared a very convincing though slightly bewildering family tree about twins marrying twins. But I do not think I will be taking that 
very seriously. I really cannot see myself in the role of a typical English gentleman. Even if I ever inherited, which is extremely doubtful since Hubert and I are much the same age.’

‘Are you really?’ I had never thought of Wolf as a contemporary of Hubert. He looked younger, ageless somehow.

He said, ‘I have been around for a long time.’

Perhaps even as long as Thane, I thought, looking at the deerhound, who appeared to be listening intently to every word.

Returning to the house, I was surprised to find Grace Sloan installed in the kitchen and busily rolling pastry, a task exclusively Mrs Robson’s domain.

She greeted me cheerfully and I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What does it look like?’ She grinned. ‘Giving poor Maggie a hand. She was going to have a nervous breakdown as well as a fractured wrist if she didn’t get someone to help. And Hubert couldn’t recruit anyone from the village – not that that surprised me, he has never been forgiven for his treatment of young Lily and offers of employment are regarded with caution.’

‘And so you offered.’

She nodded. ‘Not altogether altruistic. Maggie is a friend and I like cooking anyway. And I’m being paid quite generously as Sir, as she calls him, is quite desperate. Every little helps and I’ll do anything but wash and iron that man’s shirts and linen. I have to draw the line somewhere.’

‘How long can you stay?’

She shrugged. ‘As long as it takes.’ 

My mind raced ahead, glimpsed freedom, Edinburgh and home. With Grace here, I was no longer needed. Or was I? I saw an impediment to my plans arising and asked, ‘What about Kate?’

‘What about her?’ was the indifferent response. ‘She’ll have to learn to cope, that’s all.’ And, confirming my own thoughts on the subject, she added, ‘Nothing wrong with her, except being spoilt rotten by Sir.’

Laying down the rolling pin, she looked at me and said earnestly, ‘If I was you, I’d seize the chance to disappear sharpish, like Collins. You might as well, you know. We’ll manage somehow until she gets back.’

It seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

Wolf Rider was going. Thane and I would go as well, leaving Hubert with his new-found friend, Sandeman, although from what I had seen so far, ‘friendship’ was too strong a word. ‘Irritable tolerance’ seemed a more apt description, with Hubert shouting and Sandeman whining in return.

Not at all a pleasant couple to have around. I shuddered. How refreshing it would be to leave Staines behind.

As I was walking Thane later, I spotted the familiar figure of Sergeant Sloan, gloomily contemplating the pond as if something nasty might erupt from its depths and scatter the overgrown weeds.

He gave me good-day and I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Supposed to be calling on my sister-in-law.’ Pausing, he stared again at the pond. ‘Grace has told me about Collins’ disappearance and I have a naturally suspicious mind that goes with the job. It’s my daily bread to solve mysteries, a 
perpetual itch, you might call it. Not often a missing person’s inquiry comes to Alnwick. I’m lucky if I get a lad’s head caught in the school railings or an old lady’s cat up a tree.’

We laughed and I realised why I was not upstairs packing and recovering my trunk from the gunroom – this was my profession too and a perpetual itch described it perfectly. That’s what it would be for me too if I went back to Edinburgh without knowing what had happened to Collins.

So I decided to introduce Sergeant Derek Sloan to Rose McQuinn, Lady Investigator, Discretion Guaranteed.

His eyebrows vanished into his receding hairline and he whistled. ‘Well, well. A very unusual job for a young lady, but I do hear there’s one or two with Pinkerton’s Detective Agency in America. If this is your life story, then let’s sit down. My feet are killing me.’

So we retreated to the rustic seat overlooking Staines village and the kirkyard, where fresh flowers marked Cedric’s grave.

Sloan asked if he might smoke a pipe while I gave him a brief outline of my life in Edinburgh and the events that had led me to Staines, including Hubert’s proposal, though I didn’t reveal that he had been the victim of blackmail and my role in solving that particular case.

He listened carefully, stroking Thane’s head, which was well received.

As I reached the end, he said, ‘I could have guessed that you aren’t the usual run of middle-class ladies I encounter. That bicycle, too, created quite a stir, I bet.’

He chuckled then regarded me gravely. ‘So Mr Staines wants to marry you?’ When I told him I had refused, he shook his head. ‘Think well about it. Many a girl would jump at the chance of being lady of the manor, aristocratic old family, 
handsome squire who is also a distinguished photographer with Royal connections, so Grace tells me.’

‘You make it sound very tempting, Sergeant, but one reason I refused was that I wasn’t brought up to that station in life.’

‘Did your refusal have anything to do with being a policeman’s daughter?’

‘Not at all. I was and am very proud of Inspector Faro.’

He grinned. ‘And so you should be. Personal detective to Her Majesty. We’ve even heard of him in Alnwick.’

I smiled. ‘Well, let’s just say that, like all little girls, I went though a phase of wanting to be a princess, but that was before I developed a social conscience and I’ve long outgrown such nonsensical notions. And living beneath the roof at Staines has certainly changed my ideas about the way high society lives.’

I watched as a spiral of rather nice aromatic smoke drifted between us. ‘What about that Red Indian chap?’ he asked. Did his casual tone indicate that he was detecting a romance?

‘I met Chief Wolf Rider years ago when I first came to Edinburgh. He was with a Wild West circus and has proved to be a good friend. It was quite by a happy accident that we met here again.’

‘Hmm.’ Sloan sounded doubtful and asked, ‘Is he, well, trustworthy?’ betraying the prejudice of patriotic Englishmen who supported the Great Imperial Empire and its Empress against those people whose skins were not white and so were classed as redskin savages.

I decided not to tackle him on his shallow viewpoint, especially as I had a sense of caution about what I should tell this particularly perceptive policeman, who now changed the subject by asking, ‘What do you know about Collins? I gather 
from hints via Grace that, to put it delicately, she is more than just Miss Kate’s nurse. Also that the past history of Staines is very murky indeed.’

‘What kind of murk?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, insanity. Some of them would have been committed these days. And the present generation might well be included.’

Did he mean Hubert? I wondered, as he added, ‘I know about Kate’s sister’s suicide and his wife’s fatal accident. And Grace’s husband, too. Not a safe place to live, is Staines.’

Turning his head, he regarded me very earnestly. ‘As for you, young lady, if you were my daughter I’d have you on the next train home to Edinburgh.’

I laughed. ‘But you’re not and I’m not. So there it is. I promise I’ll go when I’m ready.’

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘What do you think has happened to Miss Collins? Three days missing.’

I paused a moment before asking. ‘Are you thinking the same as me? Is she still alive?’ It came out as a whisper. When he lifted his head and stared back to where we had met and said nothing, I asked, ‘Is that why you find the pond so interesting?’

He looked worried. ‘All the indications of her leaving in haste in the early hours, without any luggage, according to what Miss Kate told Mrs Robson, might be regarded with suspicion.’

‘Collins wasn’t given to early rising and Kate also said she didn’t like walking – it would have been a long walk to the railway station, although Wolf Rider assured me that there would have been plenty of carts on the main road.’ I added that we had checked the trains from Alnwick that morning. 

‘Had Kate any ideas of where she might have gone?’ he asked.

‘Apparently she has a friend who works up at the Castle, but Kate didn’t know any more than that – if she was a servant, or what her name was.’

‘It would be an almost impossible task to trace this friend on such scanty information. The castle must employ a hundred servants, male and female,’ was the gloomy response.

Relighting his pipe, he considered it for a moment. ‘Time will tell. It’s too early yet for us to officially list Martha Collins as a missing person.’

A first name at last, I thought, as he went on. ‘However, if she is dead, then it was either an accident – in which case her body will turn up – or murder,’ he said gravely. ‘In which case her body will by now have been carefully concealed by her killer.’

He pointed towards the distant colliery, where the ruined pitshafts stretched an ugly profile against the sky. ‘Disused pits with all their tunnels, deep, dark and long, are ideal hiding places.’

If someone had killed Collins, the list of suspects was very short indeed, and at the very top I would put the name of her one time lover Hubert Staines.

I wondered if Sloan was thinking the same, as he repeated sternly, ‘I think you should go home to Edinburgh and leave this investigation to the police. If investigation it turns out to be and Miss Collins does not walk in the door and give us all very red faces.’

I had a letter waiting for me. From Pappa. He and Imogen were coming to Scotland, visiting friends of Imogen’s in the 
Highlands on their way to Orkney to see my sister Emily. They hoped to see me, a last chance before their imminent return to France.

I looked at the date and panicked – they planned to arrive in two days’ time. I was exceedingly fortunate that the letter had reached me in time. I might have missed their visit entirely if it had not been by the merest chance, I learnt later, that they saw Vince and Olivia in London the day after my Newcastle visit.

Much as I wanted to solve the mystery of who poisoned Cedric and the disappearance of Collins, the greater yearning was to take Thane, go back to Edinburgh, and for both of us to be free of Staines forever.

And now, most of all, I longed to see Pappa.

It seemed a long time indeed since we met in Solomon’s Tower, and suddenly every consideration, except being with him for a couple of hours, was unimportant and abruptly vanished.

I had never ceased to regret that days with Pappa had been few and far between since I took a teaching post in Glasgow before going to Arizona to marry Danny McQuinn, and Pappa had devoted his retirement to travelling with his writer friend and companion Imogen Crowe – a patriotic Irish woman I respected and admired, an ardent feminist I secretly longed to have as my stepmother. Sadly, occasions to meet had been rare and very precious since my return to Scotland.

‘You very nearly didn’t get that letter,’ said Grace as she was leaving, her daily tasks completed. ‘Sandeman had it in his hand, but I’d looked through the post on the hall table. Nosey, that’s me, and I’d noticed one for you marked “Urgent”.’

‘I had quite an argument with our reverend friend. “You are 
quite mistaken, Mrs Sloan,” says he. “These letters are all for Mr Staines.” “No, they aren’t,” says I. “Look through them again. You’ve picked up one for Mrs McQuinn by mistake.” And I watched him. “You are quite right. I didn’t notice. Not wearing my spectacles.” Brazen old devil. Spectacles indeed. I don’t trust that old fellow as far as I can see him, and that’s without my spectacles. I don’t know how Sir can bear to have him around indefinitely.’

I looked forward to breaking the news to Hubert that I was leaving immediately. He would have to accept and take seriously the fact that I had not the slightest wish or the remotest intention of marrying him.

Was it possible that at our first meeting I had seen him as the present-day incarnation of my Borders warrior hero Harry Hotspur? Now his arrogance seemed absurd. Statements that he would never let me go belonged in some medieval chronicle and certainly did not fit in with my notions of a modern society in which, one day, when we got the vote, women would no longer be chattels of men.

How he intended to keep me here in Staines against my will I could neither imagine nor take seriously, so I decided to tell him outright that I intended to go. The alternative was to creep away like a thief in the night, leaving so many questions unanswered…

I could not see my departure being achieved and walking out peacefully without an angry exchange of words, a situation I knew I could no longer avoid. My chance came after supper that evening, with only Hubert, Sandeman and Kate. 

We shared a silent meal in which Sandeman applied himself diligently to the wine and I observed that Kate’s appetite was hearty indeed, in spite of her invalid state.